There are some interesting figures from large hotel chains about the success of their mobile sites: Marriott said its recently launched site for smartphones garnered more than $1.25 million in gross revenue during its first 100 days, and Hilton said its mobile capabilities generated more than $420,000 in revenue last October and $1.4 million during a “typical 100-day period”. The figures are undoubtedly small compared to the overall revenue of the hotels (or even the online revenue), but the web sites can’t be that costly to produce.
The promotional aspect is also important — in the Marriott’s first 100 days a third were for same-day stays and about half were classified as business travel, and there were “usage spikes on days with inclement weather, when many travelers were stranded at airports without traditional access to the Web,” according to Management.Travel. These are the sorts of customers the hotels want to keep, so even though mobile won’t be a huge money spinner (one prediction is that online hotel bookings will generated $20 billion in revenue by 2010, of which $77 million will be from mobile, far less than 1 percent) it’s a no-brainer for hotels to make sure their site is easy to find and use as a service to its customers…they don’t want them trying another hotel and finding that it’s better.
Photo Credit: ajvhan
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